Alien nation, you win.

Offered a fade by Willie Green's barber yesterday afternoon, Dalembert opted for, well, a forward. A highway-wide mohawk, to be precise. By itself, it was enough, but combined with the letters shaved into the side of his head, it placed a target on him, or at least a brighter beam than his play attracts on its own.

"The mistake Philadelphia made tonight,'' rock 'n' roll legend Bob Seger said in a third-quarter interview during last night's 98-81 Pistons blowout, "was the mohawk.''

"He asked me if I wanted to get a fade,'' Sam had explained before the game. "I said, 'Forget the fade. I want to get something crazy.' ''

You think Dennis Rodman started this way? The haircut, which Dalembert vowed afterward not to alter despite his four-point, six-rebound, two-block effort, was intended to make him a tougher, meaner Sammy. He even claimed the "SD'' of remaining hair on the side of his head was not his name, but his game.

"Strong defense,'' he said.

Dalembert scored the Sixers' first basket, then used his out-of-this-world powers to disappear for the rest of the half. As for the defense part, well, Rasheed Wallace, Dalembert's primary focus, scored 19 points on 8-for-12 shooting, 11 in a first half in which the Pistons ran off to a 14-point lead.

Wallace blocked four shots in the first quarter alone. He finished with six blocks and countless more intimidations.

And he did all this while fixated on Sammy's hair.

"He was talking to me all game,'' Dalembert said. "Saying, 'What the hell?' And those sort of things.''

"I told Mo [Sixers coach Maurice Cheeks] that should have been a team fine,'' Wallace said. "Coming into a game like that.''

By the third quarter, Dalembert seemed as bewildered as his barber must have been earlier in the day. Up into the air, his shot about to be blocked by Wallace, the Sixers' big man fired a pass into the face of Detroit's Jason Maxiell, who barely got his hands up in time to avert a broken nose. Now, "Sheed'' can be a tad eccentric too, as events of this series have illustrated quite clearly, and his daily practice attire of the same ugly, ripped-up, purple shorts only confirm. In the waning moments of the Pistons' tight, Game 1 loss, Wallace infiltrated the Sixers' huddle. In Game 4 at the Wachovia Center, as Pistons coach Flip Saunders was diagramming strategy, Wallace watched a video above the court linking his mug to comedian Jimmy Walker, laughing robustly.

Last night he joined the pregame music and hype, wagging his arms like a college cheerleader. Throughout the game he bantered up the Sixers' coaches, players, then aimed a death-look stare at their bench after dropping his third and final trey in the third quarter, extending the Pistons' lead to 24 points.

Wallace was dead serious by then, the stare that of a man delivering a death notice. Perhaps he was. Afterward he said all the right things about the series not being over.

"I don't think they're going to lay down,'' he said, but the steely stare and the lack of shenanigans by him at the end of the game suggested otherwise.

"I was just trying to see some body language by them,'' he said. "Watching Mo's body language.''

The point is this: The eccentricity only works if you can back it up with a game. Dalembert is still young, a joy to be around, but until he develops facets that everybody - except maybe him - agree are needed for him to be a bonafide star, he might want to tone down the Martian child act a little.

Asked if he felt more under the microscope last night, Dalembert defiantly said, "No.'' He also said he was, "[Ticked] off right now,'' at one point, maybe at the way Wallace seemed to be treating him throughout the night. As for the hair, he said, "I will not change it for the next game. It has nothing to do with superstition.''

He's probably right on that. But it should make you play as if something's the matter with you, as if you had a reason to draw all that attention to yourself. Otherwise you just look like you're from another planet, and one that doesn't have this game mastered all that well. *

Send e-mail to donnels@phillynews.com.